Hello, Wise Children!

There’s a tenacity of radical pleasure in Wise Children’s productions and a belief in liveness as the necessary spark to renew people’s sense of what’s possible in the world. And that resonates with the questions and curiosities driving my creative practices over the last two decades.

In that time, I’ve generated a diverse portfolio that has evolved from movement, adaptation, and vibrant dramaturgy whether that’s staged in a forest, a secret field, an established theater, or a taxi cab. I relish bringing collaborators’ desires forward, when playfulness is serious business, and when people work together on a shared goal.

In my classroom, I teach The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk as an entry point for young people to discover how design, object play, and physicality heighten empathetic response systems in an audience. I’ve learned from these explorations that, like Wise Children, invention and generating fertile artistic ecosystems is the key to unleashing shared celebration…and this celebration is present and vital both to how the work is made and also in the conductive quality of the world produced onstage.

Wise Children’s adaptations are jewelry boxes, saturated with the texture and nuance of a rich and painful human condition. So…Wise Children adapting Bluebeard’s Castle? Into a magic show? (Pure and dangerous delight!)

There are so many adaptations and takes on Bluebeard…what I love is the foundation of covert female resistance, the magnetic and consuming draw of carnal knowledge, and how power plays out on a board of alliances, shifty identities, and secrets.

Most recently as a director and writer, I’ve been in collaboration with Environmental Studies students at Middlebury College. This spring we staged a communal meal in the middle of a field right next to an ancient oak tree. The arc of the piece was informed by conflict resolution tactics paired with the dramatic tensions that can exist in mealtime rituals, especially in an environment on the verge of collapse or potential revival.

In Tarot Taxi, built for New Year's Eve revelers with several performers, we decked out two cars to the nines with glitz, disco balls, DJ sets, chili lights etc…promising a tarot reading while in transit to the next location…when in fact what evolves is a comedy of errors where nothing appears to go as planned, where spiritual arrival is disrupted by material goods and economic demands, and it was all very fun, and very close-range, and super surprising, and tactile, to our customer-participants.

I have a deep appreciation for the poetic elevation of the ordinary, of playing with and against expectations, of telling complex stories with levity and gravitas. This manifests from my love of street performance, clown, political theater, and choreographed movement as they intersect with private dreaming and social dynamics in a constantly shifting world.

Responsiveness can be a delicious revolution.

I have worked within arts organizations and creative partnerships across a wide range of contexts…as an administrator for multiple festivals…as a theater director managing a touring youth company… I understand that success arrives from anticipating needs, transforming problems into opportunities, and humble attentiveness. I am confident that my honed skills as a maker, and producer, paired with my adaptive nature and ability to rise to the occasion will be a great addition to the already vibrant Wise Children team.

Thank you for listening.